Two Years On

Published: September 11, 2003

Even as the twin towers were falling, we wondered what kind of world we would find ourselves living in in the future. The trauma of that day led us to expect an abrupt demarcation in our lives and in the life of the nation. How abrupt, how tragic it has been for many people cannot be overemphasized. But coming into this second anniversary, our response is more measured; there is a recognition that we are now living among the uncertain ripples thrown out by that collision of worlds. The purity of our first reactions has been eroded by time and by some of the uses that have begun to be made of 9/11.

Any two years in which America fought two wars would be memorable in their own right, the wars themselves capable of shunting our sense of other events to one side. The first war, in Afghanistan, rose right out of the ashes of the World Trade Center. Its logic, if not its conclusion, was clear. But the reasons for the second war seem muddier now than when the conflict began. For many, there seemed to be a connection between Saddam Hussein and the terrorists who crashed into the Pentagon and the trade center. That connection was encouraged by President Bush and his administration and taken on faith by much of the country. It is worth reminding ourselves, on this day particularly, that we come no closer to understanding the significance of 9/11, at home and abroad, if we use the memory of what happened that morning falsely and vainly.

It seemed as if two great tides emanated in response to the tragedy of that Tuesday. One was a sense of generosity, a deep compassion that expressed itself in immediate acts of cooperation and support. The other was a sense of patriotism, a strong consciousness of our American identity. When those two tides overlapped, as they often did in the months after 9/11, the result was impressive and profoundly moving. But we have also seen, in the past two years, a regrettable narrowing of our idea of patriotism. It has become, for some people in some ways, a more brittle expression of national sentiment -- a blind statement of faith that does more to divide Americans from one another than to join them together.

We need to fear and temper that kind of rigidity. It is not the least bit unpatriotic to question some of the arguments that led to war in Iraq. No national purpose is served by losing our sense of political and historical discrimination in an upwelling of patriotic fervor. Much as it may seem logical that the horror of the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, is inextricably linked to the other terrorist horrors around the world, the fact is that the connections are not all clear. The final answers must be as the evidence -- not political will -- determines.

One of the hardest parts of living with 9/11 may be learning to understand the ways in which it was a local and particular, rather than universal, event. Watching a disaster of those proportions gradually become scaled to a broader historical context does not come easily to those of us who witnessed it in one form or another. But that is what history will do and what we must accept.

For two years, and for many more years to come, we have had a chance to watch how individuals, communities and institutions have absorbed the shock of 9/11. It has illuminated all of us, thrown us all into a peculiar relief. It has taught us important things about who we are, what our government is, and who our elected leaders are and what they make of us. Whether it is the debate over the war in Iraq or over the proper memorial for Lower Manhattan, the memory of 9/11 should provide us with a standard of judgment, of moral assessment, based on our own behavior and on that of others, that is not easily faulted or compromised. Those buildings did not fall or their occupants die to become symbols in an incoherent argument. That outpouring of strength and consideration was never meant to serve as the pretext for false conclusions. The day will slip away from us as time passes, but not the clarity of the actions we took together in response. The purest patriotism we have in us to express was expressed in the common generosity of that moment.